Owl Post
by TheMysteryReviewer3624
Summary: Requests I wrote to celebrate my first 100 followers on Tumblr! So far featuring angsty Drarry and slightly-less-angsty Dramione.
1. human i'm trying to come clean

AN: For an anon who wanted a fluffy Drarry drabble. It would appear that I am incapable of writing fluff. This is set in an AU seventh year, while the Trio are on the run.

* * *

When they find him, there's more blood on him than there is in his body.

"It had to be Malfoy," Ron says, in a voice that announces that he is done with life, the universe and everything, but even he helps out with Hermione's frantic attempts at first-aid with the kind of concentration that Professor McGonagall never saw from him. She's digging books out of her back and flicking through them, swiftly and with increasing desperation, casting spell after spell, while Ron works diligently beside her and Harry sits helplessly by their half-conscious patient, trying to think of something comforting to say.

"How did this happen?" he asks eventually of the bedraggled and thoroughly wretched-looking Malfoy.

Malfoy smiles mirthlessly. "The Dark Lord wanted to know where you were." Harry flinches. "He was not best pleased when he discovered my parents had no idea."

"So why are you –"

"You're not the only one who can be stupid and reckless, Potter," Malfoy snarls through gritted teeth, and his sneer as he says the last part is the most self-deprecating expression Harry has ever seen on him.

The thought that Malfoy got seriously hurt trying to protect his parents is not a comfortable one.

Eventually Hermione declares that she's done as much as she can for the now-unconscious Malfoy. "One of us should probably sit with him during the night, though," she concludes. "Just to make sure he's all right."

"What on earth do you think is going to happen to him during the night?" Ron demands.

"_I don't know!_" Hermione snaps. "I am not a _medical encyclopaedia_, Ronald, I am a teenager trying to make sure that one of her classmates doesn't _die_!"

Ron wisely backs off. "You're probably right," he allows. "One of us should stay with him, to keep an eye on him if nothing else."

"Ron Weasley, if you honestly think at this point that he did this on purpose to somehow use it against us –"

"I wasn't going to suggest that!" Ron protests, and Harry's pretty sure he's telling the truth. "It's just, you know, I wouldn't put it past You-Know-Who to do this to him and send him here deliberately, like a trap or something."

Hermione sighs. "It's horrible to think that that's actually quite likely," she says. She sounds absolutely exhausted. "I'll take first watch."

* * *

Of all the uncomfortable things that have ever happened to Harry, sitting next to an unconscious Malfoy while Hermione sleeps and Ron keeps watch outside the tent has to be ranked pretty high. It's unsettling to see his one-time enemy so – he really doesn't want to use this word but it's the only one that fits – _vulnerable._

Of course, then Malfoy starts twitching and moving around in his sleep, and everything is suddenly even more awkward than it was before.

Now he's making tiny, pained noises. And he's – oh God, he's whispering something.

He's whispering _No_ like he's in pain.

_Shit_.

Hermione would probably tell him not to do this, Harry reflects, as he attempts to gently shake Malfoy awake. She'd probably say Malfoy needs rest after everything that's happened to him, and that Harry shouldn't try to wake him up when he's so badly injured.

Harry does not, at this point, particularly care what Hermione would say.

"Malfoy," he hisses, "_wake up_."

Ice-grey eyes stare blearily up at him, and Malfoy blinks. "What d'you want, Potter?" he groans, words slightly slurred.

_Why do I bother trying to be nice to him again,_ Harry thinks grumpily (hey, he's sleep-deprived), but can't bring himself to regret it. "You – looked like you were having a nightmare," he says uncomfortably.

He looks back at Malfoy only to see that his ex-nemesis looks, if possible, even more uncomfortable than he does. And Harry knows that look: it's the same one he wore during fifth year, after every time he woke up breathing hard and sweating and desperately trying to remind himself that he wasn't in that graveyard anymore and Cedric wasn't dying right in front of his eyes –

"I'm _fine_," Malfoy grits out.

Harry is too tired – and too much reminded of himself – to argue with him. "Malfoy," he says patiently, "in case you've forgotten, I've had the Cruciatus Curse used on me before. I know what it looks like when someone's reliving it."

Malfoy flinches.

"Oh, for _God's sake_, Malfoy," Harry snaps, finding himself sounding uncannily like Hermione, "don't tell me you're embarrassed about _being Crucio'd_."

"Don't be an idiot, Potter," Malfoy retorts, "of course I'm not." He sounds a little more like his former self. Harry is pretty sure that shouldn't be as reassuring as it is.

They don't speak any more after that. Harry sits there and tries not to think about anything that's just happened, while Malfoy lies next to him attempting to sleep and failing miserably. The sight is almost pitiful, except that it's hard to use the word pitiful about Malfoy. He seems to resist it.

Somehow, at some point during the night, Harry finds himself stroking Malfoy's hair. He hears Malfoy's breath hitch, but the other boy (is he really a boy anymore?) says nothing, a clear sign that he's been worse affected than he pretends. Harry should probably feel embarrassed, but he's too tired for that.

He can feel it as Malfoy slowly starts to relax; he can feel it as Malfoy finally drops off into mercifully dreamless sleep. In sleep he looks uncharacteristically peaceful, the constant tension that Harry hadn't even realised was there finally gone. Harry feels an odd, sad smile creep onto his face. He does not remove his hand from Malfoy's hair.

Ron comes into the tent to take over from Harry and, in an unexpected display of tact, says nothing.


	2. sweep the streets i used to own

AN: Anon requested Dramione. This is from a future!AU, several years after the Battle of Hogwarts.

* * *

Hermione Granger is not in the best of moods.

She's had an exhausting week and is awake only due to having drunk possibly lethal amounts of coffee. All her friends are either trying to convince her to get back with Ron – despite the fact that they're both actually quite relieved to be just friends again and considerably more comfortable with each other than they were when they were going out – or trying to set her up with people they know. To crown it all, she is now being forced to comb through an obscure wizarding law library because apparently wizarding judges prefer precedent to common sense, which means she has to find a precedent in which a witch or wizard actually used their common sense. Hermione has lived in the wizarding world long enough to know that this is an impossible task.

So when she sees Draco Malfoy heading for the very same section she's in, she does not exactly feel the urge to spontaneously burst into the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's _Messiah_.

Hermione hasn't really encountered him much since they both finished school, but Ron's run into him a couple of times. He seemed rather bemused by how much Malfoy has apparently improved since their schooldays, even going as far as to say that "if I didn't know him, I'd say he was slowly metamorphosing into a decent human being", which from Ron, regarding Malfoy, is high praise.

His appearance at least has improved. He was always sort of pointy-looking in school, but now his features have settled so that he looks sharp and distinguished. Thankfully, he has forgone a cane or a billowing cloak, instead choosing dark, conservative robes, and thus preventing any unfortunate resemblance to his father. But there's something else that's different, too. It takes Hermione a while to realise that it's the absence of a sneer.

They studiously ignore each other, burying themselves in their work. Unfortunately for Hermione, her work is so _irritating_ that eventually the frustration builds to the point where she's quite willing to risk an awkward situation and talk to the man rather than look at these documents for a second longer.

"I hope your research is going better than mine," she says, turning slightly to face him. "If I see one more record of a case where the law and common sense were at odds and the law won, I'm going to scream."

Malfoy's answering smile is sardonic, without a trace of arrogance. It's startlingly attractive. "Much the same here, I'm afraid," he replies dryly. "What are you researching?"

"…Do you know, I can't remember," Hermione tells him, taking no care to hide the exasperated weariness in her voice. "Some arcane detail of a bylaw that's going to solve a case for me. That was the idea, I think. And you?"

Malfoy's face turns almost imperceptibly bitter. "Obscure property laws. I'm trying to get Malfoy Manor out of the Ministry's filthy paws."

"They confiscated it?" Hermione is angry, but depressingly unsurprised. "Sorry, I'm stating the obvious. I must be more tired than I thought."

Malfoy lets out a quiet, cheerless laugh. "Originally they only confiscated it to go through it and check for Dark objects and curses. Then they just never got around to giving it back."

From living through the last few years of wizarding law and politics, Hermione knows that letting her outrage show in her voice will only make her seem naïve. Even so… "Every time I think people can't disappoint me any more than they already have," she states, voice freezing with anger, "they surpass themselves."

"Don't act so surprised, Granger," Malfoy drawls, horribly reminiscent of his adolescent self. "You know what the Ministry's like. You saw how easy it was for things to just… slip through the cracks." His studied indifference cracks for a moment, there, revealing a flash of what might be pain.

"We're supposed to be trying to do better, now," Hermione retorts. "That was the point."

Malfoy shrugs. "It's not as if I'm homeless: Malfoy Manor wasn't the only property we owned. I'd just like to have it back."

"I can imagine you'd be homesick for it," Hermione offers.

Malfoy turns a look of biting scorn on her. "Yes, Granger, I really want to take up residence in the house where my family lived in fear of the Dark Lord for a year!"

Hermione flinches. "Sorry," she murmurs.

She sees Malfoy's shoulders go down, and for a moment he looks infinitely tired. "No, I apologize," he says softly. "That was – unkind of me."

Hearing Draco Malfoy apologize to her and mean it is surreal. "It's all right," Hermione tells him, and goes on hesitantly: "If you don't mind my saying so, you seem rather different."

"Court-mandated therapy," Malfoy informs her. "It works wonders." The note of dark humour in his voice is entirely new. "I still want the Manor back, though."

Hermione is about to say that she understands, of course, no matter what happened there it was still his home for seventeen years before that, but he continues before she can speak: "I can't really explain why, I just – need to own it. So long as I own it, I control what happens there. If I don't…" His voice turns quiet, introspective, and strangely hollow-sounding. "If I don't, it's as if it's – as if it's still happening there. All the time. I have to be _sure_…" He shakes his head as if to clear it of such dark imaginings. "Anyway, it's been in the family since the Norman Conquest. I will _not_ let my father's ill-considered alliance with a madman change that."

Hermione can't help but smile. She looks back down at her own papers: there's nothing of use here – she'd better try a section dealing with a later period. She packs away her things into the neat, if worn, satchel she carries everywhere, and gets up, stretching to get the stiffness out of her limbs.

"Have you tried Calidor the Cunning's Ownership of Property Act?" she asks, as a parting shot.

"Granger," Malfoy calls after her, "that Act is from 1629!"

"It's never been revoked!" she calls back cheerfully, revelling in the way his jaw drops. He really is unfairly attractive.


End file.
